#once again... sorry about the blood puns lol i refuse to be stopped

[darlincollins]

"it's your god-forsaken right to be loved" part 2

And I'm back! More alpha Darlin' shenanigans, this time from their POV- this part is more focused on establishing their dynamic with the pack, so not much David content in this one, but he'll be back next time in all his grumpy glory! Also I'm so sorry about the blood puns, it's very late and I'm too tired to tell how not-funny they are so... they're in there. Thank you again to @colloquialcolival for this prompt which has taken over my entire mind, I love it!!

content warnings: brief mention of quinn, mentions of blood!

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Darlin' needed to run properly. Had been needing to since they’d seen David earlier that evening, honestly, but had been pushing down the wolf curling in their chest and pleading for space, for release, for liberty. Over the past few hours, though, that quiet growling had become a howl that was drowning out logic and reason. Their skin was itching, longing to be shed and replaced with a body more free. They were totally buzzing, watching the pack socialize around them without hearing a word and just counting down the seconds until people started to disperse so they could go.

Not very alpha-like, a nasty voice in their head sang.

Go fuck yourself, they thought right back, schooling their mind into a direction more suited to a pack alpha than the desperate, clawing urge to leave humanity behind.

As far as pack meetings where they'd had to tell everyone that an evil sadist hellbent on a very bloody kind of hedonism was roaming the streets of their city and that they were going to take it upon themselves to bring him down (of which there had only been this one, to be fair, though that was more than enough), they thought it could have gone worse. David, reluctantly true to his word, had shown up looking much better thanks to Sam's work, although he'd spent the entire meeting staring angrily at his shoes and basically sprinted from the room without a word as soon as it was over. They could understand the urge, honestly. There had been some tension and a lot of mixed feelings, too, which Darlin' had shut down quickly before they could explode. No need to push David further off the edge of the map, after all. Although maybe it had been a mistake, not letting people vent their feelings? Pent up frustration could easily lead to resentment, and that would be worse for all of them in the long run. Maybe-

“Alpha?” a voice interrupted their train of thought. Startling, they looked around with what they hoped wasn’t too wild an expression. In front of them was one of the younger pack members. Darlin’ remembered them from their graduation a few months back; they were a smart kid, and planning to go to university for computer science. It was one of their first meetings as a part of the pack proper. Great timing, huh?

“Oh. Uh, what’s up?”

The kid fidgeted nervously. “Um… is- just, are we- are we safe? Or, I mean, are we going to be okay?” Their face flushed as Darlin’ stared at them. “Not that I’m scared! I just-”

Stop. Look. Listen. Then put the pieces together and you’ll find the meaning underneath the words, said a whisper in the back of their mind that sounded like their beta. Easy enough. But the second part, the actual… fixing shit part, was still going to suck majorly.

They forced a wooden smile, or tried to, and prayed it didn't look like a grimace instead. “Well- it’s- everything’s gonna be just fine. There- you know, there’s-” Darlin’ took a deep breath. God. Why was this so hard. “Look… even if you were scared, that’s- it would be okay. You know, you’re allowed to be. And- but you don’t have to be, because we’re all… here… for each other, and we’ll keep each other safe.” It was perhaps the worst and least convincing pep talk they’d ever heard in their life.

The kid did not seem reassured. Smart, considering that sorry excuse for a heart to heart. Fuck. Where the hell is Asher, they thought, glancing around the room like he might have materialized next to them in the last three seconds before catching themself. Bad, they chided themself. Asher had a life, and they were supposed to be alpha. They couldn't keep running to him any time a pack member displayed a feeling in front of them. It wasn't fair to him, and it wasn't fair to the pack either, to claim the role of leader while also hiding and making their beta the sole pillar of emotional support for over 40 people. They knew all this. They'd been repeating it to themself for months, before and during every complicated conversation with a pack member that had had them crawling out of their skin and physically restraining themself from calling him to save them. But still. Where the hell was Asher?

“Anyway,” they said. Steeled themself to bring it all home with a sweeping, redeeming finish. “It- it’s gonna be okay, so… you don’t have to worry about this.” Still looking a little worried, the kid smiled weakly and rejoined their parents on the other side of the room while Darlin’ contemplated tossing themself into the ocean.

"Smooth talkin'," Milo whispered from nearby, shooting them an amused smirk. They flipped him off, though there was no fire in the gesture and they both knew it.

Well, at least stumbling through that interaction had distracted them from the urge to flee, at least temporarily, and seemed to have gotten them through the rest of the pack’s unofficial social time- people were starting to pull on coats and collect their bags, which meant that soon they could get out of this suffocating room, this suffocating body.

Ash waved at them as he appeared from wherever he’d been hiding away during Darlin’s brief panic, looking them over with an uncharacteristically serious expression. “You alright, buddy? That was a rough one.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s fine.”

“I can lock up here if you want to head out,” he offered cheerfully.

It was tempting. Very tempting, but… if they took him up on it, would it be like they were running away from their responsibilities? Making him take on their burdens again just because they were too uncomfortable to do it themself?

He winked at them.”Get outta here, boss. The meeting’s pretty much done anyway. We’ll talk tomorrow, right?”

Darlin’ nodded, overcome with gratitude for their beta. They made a note to give him a vacation sometime soon, waved at the chorus of goodbyes that echoed around the room as they headed out, and shifted the second they hit pavement, running in the direction of home.

It was such a relief, to be wolf instead of human, to have the run and the blurring world at the forefront of their mind instead of… well, everything else. God, what a disaster. The way they saw it, there were two problems here. One, obviously, Quinn. Pretty simple objective: locate. Kill. The only issue was that Quinn appeared to be one of those slippery fuckers who would make shit really hard for you until you finished the job. The second issue was that David appeared to genuinely believe the pack didn’t care if he lived or died, and that was infinitely more difficult. How the hell do you fix almost 20 years of abandonment issues and tense relationships?

Damn it. They were getting a headache- this was definitely too complicated a mess for them to outrun, even as a wolf. They'd talk to Asher about it tomorrow. They had meant it when they told David they weren't going to hide behind Ash's vastly superior people skills instead of doing their job anymore, but he was still their beta, and his ability to deftly navigate tangled complexes of emotions was going to make him indispensable in fixing this whole thing.

But that would be a problem for another day. It was late- nothing they could do in the next few hours was going to magically solve anything. Darlin' forced their mind blank and concentrated on the sensation of paws hitting ground, breeze blowing through fur, city lights dimming and trees growing taller the further from Dahlia's downtown they ran.

It was almost 1 by the time Darlin' made it home. As they padded up the drive, the katydids chirping in the trees fell silent, recognizing a predator afoot. Realizing they'd need to be human so they could get the house key out of their pocket, Darlin' prepared themself to shift back and feel all that noise crowding them out of their own mind again, then realized the door was already cracked open an inch. Sam really was the most wonderful man alive. They pushed it open with their head, shoving it closed behind them with a hind leg. Following the noise from the living room, they found the newborns on the couch with their eyes fixed on the television Sam had bought after they moved in- probably still watching that high school werewolf show they'd started the other night. (Darlin' had watched one episode before denouncing it as totally unrealistic, after which they'd been declared a buzzkill by both kids.)

Fred waved as they followed the faint trail of Sam's aura to their bedroom, and his own progeny lifted the bag of blood they'd stuck a straw into like a toast, barely glancing away from the screen. Darlin' nodded in their direction as well as they could while still being a supernaturally large canine, then nosed their way to where Sam was waiting.

Their mate was sitting on the bed reading, back leaned against the headboard. He looked up when they padded into the room, a small smile flickering over his lips, and patted his leg in invitation. Darlin’ eagerly jumped onto the bed, flopping down on the soft sheets and letting their head flop against Sam’s thigh. A shiver of relief coursed through their entire body just being this close to him.

“Meeting went that well, huh?” he murmured sympathetically, scratching behind Darlin’s ear with one hand. Fuck, that felt amazing. They grumbled, arching their head further into his touch. They were melting… or floating; either way, there were no more problems, no more painful conversations that made them feel like they were being strangled by their own inadequacy, no more doubts. Just Sam, and this bed, and the perfect, gentle pressure of his fingers carding through their fur.

Darlin’ waited until the buzzing of anxiety zipping through their head quieted to a low, unintelligible mumble before shifting back to human form, stretched out with their head in Sam’s lap. He put his book to the side at the sound of the magic taking hold, smiling down at them. “Feelin’ better?”

They nodded tiredly. “Thanks. For leaving the door open.”

“Figured you’d want some time to clear your head after the meeting,” he said, continuing to lightly stroke their hair.

“Hmm,” they sighed. “How were things here?”

“Business as usual. Spent half the damned night chasin’ those kids around the woods, and the other half listening to them come up with a blood-themed restaurant menu.”

“Huh. Anything good?”

“Not sure; does ‘eggplant plasma-san’ sound good to you? Or ‘chicken type O neg-gets?’”

“That’s not even a-”

“Now, don’t you start too.”

Darlin’ snickered and turned their head, catching Sam’s hand in their own to press a kiss to his palm in repentance before the two of them fell into a comfortable silence.

“Hey… thank you for earlier. For helping. I-” Wow, they really were bad at this. But with Sam it bothered them less- he wasn’t expecting something from them, he was just waiting. He would understand their word jumble for what it was meant to be, and wouldn’t be bothered by the clumsy execution. They shook their head. “Just- thank you.”

“‘Course, darlin’. The pack is family to me too. If I can help them, then I want to do that.”

They smiled up at him. “I love you.”

Sam leaned down to give them a soft kiss. “Love you too, darlin’.” He pulled back a little, considering their face for a moment before frowning in concern. “Hey. Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I just-” Darlin’ sighed. “I let David down before. And not just with… the Quinn stuff. But, before that. I wasn’t there. Not when he first joined the pack, and not any time after that. I shouldn’t be surprised he left.”

Sam gave them one of those looks that meant he disagreed with them. “You were only 14.”

“I had time after that to make things right, though. And I didn’t.”

He sighed, rubbing the shell of their ear gently. He clearly still didn’t think they were right, but knew them well enough to realize when he needed to change tactics. “There’s still time to do that. David’s back now. He’s here. And I never bet against you, darlin’. If you’re aiming to fix things with him and the pack, then you’re gonna make it happen.”

“You think?”

“I know. But,” Sam said, shooting them a different look- the ’lecture incoming’ face. “You’re not gonna do it tonight. You’re tired, and you need to get some rest. Plenty of time for world-savin’ and pack-leadin’ tomorrow.” He patted their shoulder until they sat up, pouting that their resting place was being disturbed until Sam scooched down to lie next to them and pulled them down onto his chest, reaching over to turn the bedside lamp off. “Let’s sleep.”

Darlin’ sighed, snuggling into their mate, trying to lull themself into it by focusing only on the sound of his heartbeat, the texture of the blankets, the… rogue vampire out there haunting their pack member… the contract to work the E&E Games they had to review… the meeting with Asher tomorrow… the-

“Hey,” he whispered. “I can hear that brain of yours turning a mile a minute. The day’s done, darlin’. You can set those worries down now. Even if it’s just for a few hours. I got you… I got you.”

And they drifted off safe in that assurance.